


Mercury

by Keamperia_Anderson



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, M/M, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:27:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29506185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keamperia_Anderson/pseuds/Keamperia_Anderson
Summary: Mercury in a noisy world.
Relationships: Hong Kong/Iceland (Hetalia)
Kudos: 6





	Mercury

We live in such a noisy world.

Hordes of parents at the school gates showing off their children to each other.

Deafening music blaring out from the seats of the bus.

Two cars scrapped down the street, and the owners are using every rip-off tactic just to pay less.

Someone practising piano upstairs, someone arguing and dropping bottles, a baby crying.

People are playing out their sorrows and joys in the world while putting up walls for themselves; they are complaining vociferously while becoming the perpetrators of their own resentment. Everyday life is always one farce after another.

And so I thought that I might be living a life so pale that it would become painful to have too much empathy.

But it's not all pale, at least ...... If you paint the world with a monotonous layer of noise, there is still one person who will retain the original colour.

His name is Leon.

In junior high school, we all wore headphones on the way home from school, but the volume was only turned up to a level that we could barely hear. The pop music on the headphones became the backdrop for conversations.

Usually Leon would start a conversation and I would answer. Like today.

"Have you heard? Someone died in a stampede in the subway."

"I heard about it, the place isn't too far from us, I think."

I have to admit that I'm not too good at picking up the conversation, and maybe it depends on the circumstances, but at least when it comes to death-related topics, we all have nothing to say.

You can't be offensive or seem too indifferent, so that death is perhaps the hardest thing to evaluate.

"It's true that it's not far, and that line also stops at the metro station next to the school - but come on, let's talk about something else? Like the real reason the rooftop of the student housing block was closed?"

"I always thought it was for safety reasons."

"That's true. Only it's rumoured that last summer a guy ran out onto the rooftop and poured a whole bottle of orange juice down in an attempt to vent, and yes, someone happened to be passing by downstairs at the time, then ......"

"That's terrible!"

"Splashing from head to toe, not a drop was left."

Leon tried to play it cool but couldn't hide the grin on his face, so I laughed along with him.

In retrospect, that was the best time we'd ever had in junior school. We didn't have any close friends besides each other, but we were happy, like asteroids floating around in space.

\--I use this metaphor because Leon didn't start our conversations with "Have you heard?" since we entered high school, except for our high-school sophomore year.

The first month of sophomore year he found a loophole in the school rules, which only stated that boys and girls were not allowed to fall in love, and didn't say what would happen if a boy fell in love with a boy. We had already gone from friends to lovers before then, but only in an underground relationship, without letting a third person, even our closest classmates, know.

It was raining on the first day of July near the end of term, and my clothes were drenched by the countless people in mackintoshes beside me as I squeezed into the underground station. When I arrived at Leon's house, I rang the doorbell and realised that the birthday present I had prepared was nowhere to be found. It must have been squeezed or stolen by someone on the tube.

He didn't scold, just reached out to welcome me in.

"Don't mind about that, it's the best present to me that you could come here."

I turned my head away, not wanting him to see my red face.

He also said that his mother had given him the gift of being away from home all day. We all loved the gift and began huddled on the couch in the living room watching old movies on disc, falling asleep twice in the middle and spilling half of the bucket of popcorn on the floor. When the cast list started scrolling on the TV screen, Leon got up to get a broom to clean it up, and we chatted about the leading man and woman's scenes and the end credits.

Before we knew it, the rain outside the window subsided and finally stopped.

It was after seven o'clock when night fell, and after dinner I followed him to the rooftop, where an astronomical telescope was kept. Leon had come up here with his kit, and after puzzling over it for a while, he finally gave up: "There's nothing I can do with this old guy, I was hoping to look at the stars."

I said, "We can see the stars with the naked eye too."

There was no moon in the sky, instead it was densely populated with stars. We used what little knowledge we had of astronomy to point out which star was which in which direction. Various academic terms were poured out in a pretentious stream, and the two of us drew closer and closer together.

Then, somehow, we kissed. He started, and then I responded. For all the time in my mind since, that kiss has been accompanied by the smell of fresh air after the rain.

In my illusion, as our lips touched, a giant crystal ball rose out of nowhere in the night sky: transparent and pure white, decorating itself so dazzlingly with reflected light that it almost took the place of the moon. The crystal ball began to spin, as it does on the top of a music box, as if all the brightest things in the world had converged there.

It is not until the humid summer air replaces body heat around it that the crystal ball slowly begins to disappear. Or perhaps it flew off to higher ground until becoming a real star.

"Emil, have you heard of it?" Noticing the familiar opening line, I was instantly pulled back to reality. Leon was propped up on both elbows on the rooftop railing, looking off into nowhere. "Some people call Mercury the loneliest planet." He whispered.

"Why is that?"

"Because there are no moons, I guess."

For a moment, the conversation seemed to return to its old style of being inexplicable and unintelligible to anyone on the sidelines.

Until we re-entered the stairwell. "I'm afraid we won't be seeing each other for the whole summer vacation." Leon said, "She'll lock me at home as soon as finals are over, with all those extra-curricular classes and stuff."

I watched his face in the narrow hallway. The voice-activated lights flickered on and off, creating a rare moment of silence.

I knew that he had talked to me about this. He had an older sister, two years older than him, who had run away from home at the same age, on the similar summer holiday and the similar night as us. It didn't take more than a day for her to be found, but a lot of things just became out of control from then on.

"You know how funny it is, that my mother thought my sister wants to run away because she had too less school work to do and became idle." Leon said this as he told me about it.

"Then she started taking it upon herself to put pressure on us, like - never mind, it's okay to skip all that, right? I don't really want to recall.

"Anyway, Emil, I'm so lucky to meet you."

My thousand words eventually came together into one, "It's okay, I understand you." I thought that's what he needed most.

Like now I said, it's okay, it's not your fault.

He said thank you, and we waved goodbye. The moment before I turned around, the hallway suddenly darkened, so I didn't get a good look at the red lines that crisscrossed the inside of Leon's arms, exposed outside his short sleeves. Some of them were deep, some shallow, and some had turned a light brown as the time goes by.

The source had been there for a long time, and I didn't even notice it until the dust had settled.

Like when I left the building, it erupted back into the noise which I hated. There were schoolgirls crying, someone had overturned a whole table of food, someone was practising the violin like a sawing table leg, and Leon was drowned out among them.

All the joys and sorrows of this world are incompatible.

You stood in front of me, and the only thing I saw was you facing the light, not the scars that you hid.

So I didn't dare to say things like "I understand you" to anyone easily since then. I thought I was your satellite, but you have long since turned into the Mercury.

At the end of August, less than ten days before the start of the school year, I received a phone call from Leon, just after I had finished my lessons at a cram school not far from his house.

"Emil," the voice said, pronouncing my name for the last time.

"I've finally realised - actually, I guess - that **my existence is just a burden to my mother**."

That was the opening line of the day.

"My sister must have known it too, but she was too timid, so she had no choice but to run away from home. So, is there a once and for all solution to this."

The wind at the other end was so loud that it poured straight into the microphone, crossing the distance of the radio waves to the earpiece. Vaguely aware of the danger revealed behind certain words, I interrupted him regardless, "Where are you?"

"A place ...... can't name, and you might not know it either."

Instinct tells me he's lying. I had no proof, yet I was certain he was still at home. I turned and ran over, and there was more than the sound of the wind in receiver, more than the cacophony of people carried by the wind, different from the usual noisy world. It was like the rippling of a stone in a puddle of water.

The crowd intensified and was about to reach its climax, while I began to run wildly, even if there was only the slightest chance of saving the situation.

"Leon, I'm coming for you ...... **Wait for me!** I'm coming now, I have something else to say to you! --"

I weaved through the streets, ignoring the fact that the words were falling apart between my teeth and the wind that was whipping into me, making my stomach ache. I turn the corner, take a right, and enter the neighbourhood, where the noise of the crowd confirms everything. Before I knew it, the call on my phone had ended abruptly, and I continued to run and chase, just to beg him to hold on for a moment longer.

But I lost him anyhow.

I was a dozen metres from the very edge of the crowd when Leon plummeted down like a bird with a broken wing.

And so everything is still, and I don't want to worry about what these people, who are not connected with each other, are screaming about. The police, also in a hurry, tried to set up a cordon, but it was no longer my concern.

I dragged my cumbersome body into the building, through the dimly lit hallways, and ran to the rooftop. The rooftop, with its telescopes, starry sky, giant crystal ball and the only kiss after the rain, and more with a mobile phone which had a still-lit screen.

The screen that hadn't been switched off was the address list. There was only one number stored in it, apart from mine. **The suicide helpline.**

I stared at the number for a long time, until it seamlessly matched the number I knew, and I finally fell to my knees, unable to control my tears any longer.

And this noisy world still hadn't stopped.


End file.
